


Correlatives

by pythia



Series: The Best Teacher [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fake Daoism, all of the feels, being a jedi sounds annoying and difficult, kaydel and rey are learning to be friends, pretentious shit, rey is learning to be a jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 16:53:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17410670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pythia/pseuds/pythia
Summary: Even when Rey wanted to break her promises, the Force kept them for her.





	1. Chapter 1

The new Supreme Leader was young. Someone had snapped a holo of him with their communicator and sent it to someone who then spread it across the Holonet just hours after the Battle of Crait. He looked to be barely thirty years old.

Taken on the sly, the holo captured Supreme Leader Ren in profile, his pale skin and distinctive nose contrasting sharply with his dark surroundings. Brow furrowed, he stood in front of a stack of flimsi documents and datapads spread on the large table before him. He was apparently in deep thought.

Perhaps he was surveying the options for the First Order’s future now that the Rebellion had been reduced to less than a hundred people, scattered across the stars. There were so many possibilities now that the only opposition to their rule disappeared to parts unknown.

Rey had ignored the image and anyone who tried to discuss it with her. It was common knowledge that Rey had battled Kylo Ren on Starkiller Base as it broke apart beneath their feet. Everyone wanted to know if Rey knew that Kylo Ren was so young. A few whispered that he was also handsome. They also thought that it was also a shame, as it was always the handsome ones that turned out to be evil.

Leia had been quiet since the image leaked onto the HoloNet. No one had put together that Kylo Ren was her son, even though the more Rey looked at his picture, the more she saw the resemblance. Leia would work her jaw, listening to the debate around her, biting back what had to be scathing comments. Kylo made that same face when they first connected.

She’d only looked at the picture twice. Or a few more times than that. Rey hadn’t kept track. Now that her lightsaber components were complete, ready to be assembled into a blade of her own, Rey’s time was spent reading. Her days were spent trying to comprehend the Jedi texts that Kaydel had scanned and loaded onto it. Rey had winced every time she turned a page as the pages were so old and fragile. Kaydel had noticed Rey laboring over The Aionomica while getting a drink from the galley on the Millennium Falcon. It had taken her only a few hours, and Kaydel had insisted, pulling the stack of books into her arms, “Friends help each other out,” the other woman told her with a soft smile before disappearing to somewhere quiet enough to work.

Now that Rey wasn’t worried about ruining priceless books, she’d run out of reasons to avoid reading them. The papers also helped distract her from how easily Kaydel had referred to her as a friend. It filled her with a strange joy and nervousness. Finn was her first friend - was being friends with another woman work the same way? Was she even a good friend?

Truthfully, in the days after Crait, people had begun to treat her differently. Every interaction that Rey had with anyone who wasn’t Finn or Kaydel had an air of reverence and awe. Rey focused on the whispers about Supreme Leader Ren to keep from hearing the whispers about her. Finn had told her some of the stories that circulated the HoloNet and among the Rebellion. He thought that the ridiculous story was the one about how Rey had gone to the Supremacy and personally killed Supreme Leader Snoke.=

Allies old and new were calling Leia, offering their assistance on the condition that they were able to meet The Last Jedi.

So far, Leia had refused them all.

Rey didn’t feel very special or deserving of the title. After their escape, Rey hadn’t been able to float anything. When she reached out into the Force, Rey felt the connection, but distantly, like hearing muffled music from another room, straining to listen to each note. She’d only touched the Force when it had connected her and Ben in her workshop.

The Jedi books from the library tree on Ahch-to might have the answers that Rey was seeking, which made it even more difficult for Rey to pick up her datapad and read them. She dreaded the truths that they might contain. Since the Supremacy, Rey no longer dreamed of an island surrounded by a dark blue ocean. Her dreams were of a room on fire, fighting back to back with Kylo Ren, and how safe she felt with him. Even during the heat of battle.

How could she be a Jedi, a member of the Rebellion, if the thought of Supreme Leader Kylo Ren made her feel safe, and wanted? Rey didn’t have to look in her datapad to find that answer. Jedi were not supposed to feel intimately connected with anyone, let alone someone as dark as Kylo Ren.

For now, Rey was no Jedi. If she remained a Jedi without a stable connection to the force, it would be even more challenging to stay with the Rebellion. They wanted a Jedi. A legendary figure with great powers - someone like Grand Master Satele Shan. All they had was Rey, who couldn’t even float a data stick.

Luke’s bitter feelings and resentment made far more sense to Rey. She wished that they didn’t. No one seemed to notice or care that Rey hadn't done anything using the force since Crait. They didn't see that she was struggling. Even Leia hadn’t realized the real source of Rey’s reluctance to build her lightsaber.

That was the trouble with being a symbol, instead of a person. Symbols didn’t get tired, discouraged, or need support.

Lying awake at night, Rey wondered if Kylo Ren could feel her through their bond. It hadn’t disappeared after Crait but had quieted to a whisper in her ear or something that was lingering just outside her peripheral vision. They never fully reconnected, but Rey knew that he was still out there.

Even when Rey wanted to break her promises, the Force kept them for her.

Before falling asleep one night, Rey couldn’t help but wonder if being Supreme Leader was as lonely as being The Last Jedi.

No one responded to her fleeting, sleepy thoughts. That was answer enough for Rey.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything was a contradiction - full emptiness, dark lights, and be deliberate, yet spontaneous.

It seemed that the Jedi were fond of contradictions. Most of their great texts were not massive instruction manuals, but pithy aphorisms disguised as poetry. To be a Jedi, Rey was supposed to “do without doing, act without action.” Everything was a contradiction - full emptiness, dark lights, and be deliberate, yet spontaneous.

Frustrated, she’d tossed her datapad onto the bunk opposite hers before putting a pillow over her face to muffle her moans. Some of the texts seemed to be written for men like Kylo Ren, “Ruling a great country is like cooking a small fish.” Rey hadn’t known how to cook a small fish until she’d looked it up on the Holonet. Looking at the thousands of suggestions of how one might cook a small fish, Rey had to stop and laugh. She’d never ruled a great country or cooked a fish, but Rey knew exactly what the had Jedi meant.

Maybe it was just that simple. So deceptively simple that it became complicated the more someone brooded over its meaning.

She scrolled through her datapad and stopped at a random set of verses.

 

_Who knows_

_doesn’t talk._

_Who talks_

_doesn’t know._

_Closing the openings,_

_shutting doors,_  

_blunting edge,_

_loosening bond,_

_dimming light_

_be one with the dust of the way._

_So you come to the deep sameness._

 

_Then you can’t be controlled by love_

_or by rejection._

_You can’t be controlled by profit_

_or by_ loss _._

_You can’t be controlled by praise_

_or by humiliation._

_Then you have honor under heaven._

For a moment, Rey was tempted to turn back to the pages about cooking fish. She was even a little tempted to see if there was a fish somewhere that she could learn how to cook. Cooking was a skill that someone else could teach her, instead of setting off down this strange, unmarked path of studying the force. Worrying at her lip, Rey skimmed the lines again. Then for a third time.

At some point, Rey realized that she’d memorized it and mumbled it out loud to herself while staring up at the top of her bunk. Who the hell knew things and didn’t talk? Leia, for one. She’d listen to everyone around her, not saying a word until she’d heard everyone out. The people that spoke the most in Leia’s meetings were people who seemed to hate silence or didn’t read the agenda before coming. Whatever they said appeared to emphasize the Rebellion’s precarious position.

Rey paused, considering. She pulled out her datapad and skimmed over the stanzas. Was that it? That people who knew things, remained silent until it was time to speak up? Kriff. No wonder the Jedi had died out. They seemed to only speak in paradoxes that had to be decoded piece by piece. Being a Jedi was like being a Slicer, only Slicers got paid.

The rest of the lines seemed to click just then - the profound sameness was merely connecting to the Force. Was she supposed to isolate herself from the world? Go somewhere remote like Ahch-to and surround herself in the Force? That didn’t seem right to her either. The Jedi were supposed to be guardians of peace, and they couldn’t precisely accomplish that feat while in the middle of nowhere.

She cursed again when she worried away a top layer of skin on her lower lip. Space was as dry as Jakku’s deserts; the recycled air often left her lips cracked and bleeding. Licking away the blood, Rey considered the verses again and going into isolation, living somewhere like Ahch-to wasn’t a viable solution for an entire religion that stretched across the known galaxy.

“If only I could just take Ahch-to with me,” Rey muttered before locking her datapad’s cracked screen. If only she were able to carry that small, watery planet with her. Even with the Lanai hanging about and judging her.

There was a soft, strange chuckle. Not a chuckle, but a cackle. Rey started once her brain caught up with what she was hearing. Someone was laughing in her bunk.

There was no one in her bunk. There was nothing funny happening in her cot. Her bed was so small that there wasn’t even a hiding place for someone to stow away in.

“Is someone there? Kylo? Is that you? Show yourself,” Rey swung out her bed and looked around the room wildly.

The cackling laughter stopped abruptly.

“You, you - stoopa. Show yourself!” Rey snapped, waiting for whoosh air that foreshadowed Kylo Ren’s arrival. Moments ticked by, and he didn’t appear. She flopped back down and sighed. Ahch-to didn’t have weird laughter, and Rey would take the judgemental Lanai if it meant she had somewhere quiet to think.

Wait - somewhere quiet to think? Rey shot up in bed and smacked her head against the support beam that held the top bunk’s mattress in place. Cursing, she rubbed at her forehead and wondered how she’d explain away the bruise tomorrow morning. Even the injury couldn’t make her forget the connection she just made. Rey didn’t have to go to Ahch-to to be alone and with the force. She had to find that place for herself and carry it with her. That’s how she learned to be like Leia and not to be controlled by feelings - like love, fear, or greed.

Pressing her fist against the blossoming bruise, Rey lay back down on her bunk. She closed her eyes and tried to quiet her mind to settle herself into the force. Instead, she fell fast asleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on Twitter [@PythiaTweets](http://www.twitter.com/pythiatweets). Please do not repost this story or any of my work without permission. Thanks.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Twitter: [@PythiaTweets](http://www.twitter.com/pythiatweets) and [ Pythia](https://www.pillowfort.io/Pythia) on Pillowfort. 
> 
> Please do not repost any of my works. If you'd like them posted on another site, just ask.


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